The idea lifted some weight off her shoulders; she had a plan. Leigh just had to figure out how she was going to implement it. She now needed something that would allow her to glide, as well as something that would help her climb. Leigh slammed into the fourteenth platform and almost slid off completely when an unexpected sharp pain in her hip made her flinch away; she’d been cut by a jagged piece of metal that dislodged itself when she’d hit the platform. Leigh winced in pain; unless it was a mortal wound the nanites were not forgiving, but Leigh didn’t give herself time to cry; she couldn’t afford any type of first aid anyway. She needed to find something to help her climb high enough to get enough gravitational momentum and then find something else to launch herself to the finish line.

“First things first,” Leigh muttered under her breath as a platform floated over hers, easily giving her access to the roots of a massive tree that was growing on it.

She climbed the tree, gaining about 20m of height while scrolling through the options. She needed to find a way of getting a rope and a grappling hook in one item. She needed something to glide and something to climb and if she wasted two items on climbing it would mean the third item markup of 200% would be applied. She simply couldn’t afford that.

“A fishing pole?” she considered as she came across the item, but then immediately discarded the thought. A hook wasn’t going to help anyone if she couldn’t climb up the line and there simply was no way she could climb up a fishing pole line, no matter how good she’d gotten at climbing ropes.

“But maybe…” she considered for a second, before deciding it might work.

A fishing net. It wasn’t as good as a grappling hook. The throwing radius was severely reduced, meaning she’d be limited to the closer platforms, but it would make the grueling job she was experiencing much easier. As if to prove how difficult the task was turning out to be, Leigh slammed full-force into the concrete side of a platform, right where she’d just gotten cut. Her CHIP had misread the pattern and the platform had suddenly swerved mid-flight. She was lucky she’d gotten a hold of it at all.

Grunting in pain, she pulled herself up, prepared for the next jump and looked through the rest of the items. She needed to come up with the gliding solution before investing in the net. If the second item she chose turned out to be the more expensive one, she needed to trade for it first. Leigh scrolled through the lists as she answered the next astrophysics Cog and slammed into yet another platform. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she refused to succumb to the pain.

The next Cogwas on nanites. Modern society had used nanites for centuries and their use was so widespread that humans could hardly function without them anymore. The Cogs always varied, but Leigh preferred the military based ones the most and so she was relieved when the question was about nano-suits and not the use of nanites in the auto-farms. Leigh knew all there was to know about nano-suits, it was one of the biggest reasons why she needed to get into First Academy. If she didn’t, she’d never be able to wear one. In five seconds flat she was able to answer the optimization Cog, she’d done so much research on the subject over the years, particularly the last, that she knew the topic as well as the back of her own hand.

Leigh landed the next jump with slightly more grace and had her CHIP recalculate the route; she wasn’t as trusting about its pattern calculations anymore; pain did that to you. Her CHIP had years of information stored in it. Usually she trusted her Tofu implicitly; it had once been able to find a pattern based off of the steps of some ancient Quill folk-dance. This time she didn’t have any room for error though. She didn’t have time to backtrack; the route needed to be perfect. She didn’t have time for any dead ends.

[06:03.45]

Leigh minimized the countdown display so it wouldn’t keep distracting her. She needed to find a way to glide first. If she had a nano-suit things would be a lot simpler, she’d just fly to point B in two seconds flat. Unfortunately…

Wait.

Leigh froze for a second before the next Quill Biology Cog was assigned. Unconsciously working on the Cog, she went back to the menu and found what she was looking for, a wingsuit modification.

5800 points.

She growled at the sight. The suit cost more than most people made after completing the SIM, but Leigh didn’t have time to second doubt; she purchased it. She didn’t have a choice. A second later she got the net as her second purchase and subsequently used it to fling herself to the next platform. It snagged on a few outlying metal pipes and she was easily able to climb her way up using the net as a ladder. Her improvisation had turned out better than she’d even hoped. The CHIP was even able to come up with a better route after the net increased her platform-to-platform range from barely three meters to nearly nine.

After pulling herself up the twentieth platform Leigh checked on her stats, answered a Cog and moved on to the next platform. She repeated the process, over and over and over. It became so mechanical she barely even knew where one platform ended and the other began, but at least with the help of the net her progress was much faster. She continued to repeat the process as quickly as she could and kept significantly picking up in speed until she reached the same height level as Point B.

[03:26.13]

Her legs were shaking and her eyes burning from the sweat. Other than to make sure she was still making optimum use of her muscles, Leigh stopped trying to force her body’s diagram and vitals to behave exactly like she wanted them to. She was only about a fifth of the way there horizontally and there were only about three and a half minutes left. Leigh panted and wiped sweat off her brow as she considered her route for a moment. Had she really chosen the best way?

There wasn’t enough time to dwell on it.

Pushing any superfluous thoughts aside, Leigh tried to focus on her breathing which had gotten a little irregular after all of the climbing. She wasn’t done though, by her calculations she had to climb at least another 150m to get high enough so that her glide would make it all the way to Point B. If she missed the right platform, even by a little, she’d have wasted her opportunity. She only had one shot at this, if she failed, she’d never be able to get high enough to get enough momentum going to propel her anywhere, it would simply take too long.

Leigh cast her net and was already scampering up to the next platform.

[03:24.39]

Time flowed in a strange manner as she continued her climb. In some ways it was going by too fast, but in other ways it felt like it was standing still. Her mind solved the Cogs she’d been working on all along faster than she’d ever been able to before. She unconsciously upped their difficulty rating to A2, and yet, the answers kept coming just as easily. It was like each question she received fell in the exact areas of her expertise. She wasn’t about to question it. Not when physically, she was about to die.

Her lungs were burning and the Cogs were about the only thing left able to distract her enough from the physical strain. At some point she’d gotten a side-stitch as well. She hadn’t managed to control her breathing as well as she would have at any other time. Her heartbeat was racing 38% over what it should be for optimal performance, but she wasn’t going to pull back now. Her legs trembled from the exertion and her arms felt like limp noodles every time she managed to push herself over a ledge. Leigh had been in many challenging physical situations before, but right then, she couldn’t bring up the memory of a single one. It was as if she had been born to live that single moment. Eventually, she realized what it was, focus. Pure focus.

Two and a half minutes and 179 vertical meters later, Leigh knew that immediately going for the fastest vertical climb was the best idea she could have had. The higher she got, the easier it was to see the patterns the platforms laid out; she didn’t even need her CHIP to show her that the entire SIM encouraged the upward climb. The platforms were laid out closer to each other vertically than horizontally and the platforms themselves were often quite tall, allowing for a much faster vertical climb.

She’d made it. She was here. It was time.

Standing on one of the flatter and longer platforms in the vicinity, Leigh took a moment to look down at the glide-path she’d had mapped out for her on the way up. It was a grid showing the predicted movements of every platform. The ones that had a defined pattern they were following were marked in green; they were the majority. The 4% that the Tofu hadn’t been able to make out were marked in yellow. With the CHIPs features, Leigh was able to keep track of any rogue or new platforms, those would be marked in red; so far there were none.

Leigh’s breathing was ragged. It felt like her lungs had been replaced by useless gelatin at some point. Her heart was beating so fast she almost couldn’t tell where one heartbeat ended and the next one began. Her limbs were shaking from the exertion and she knew she’d have mad muscle cramps to deal with later, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the jump.

So far Leigh was ahead of schedule. She took a second to take a deep breath, both to calm herself and see if she could get her oxygenation levels up by a degree; she’d been very lax about it on the way up and she couldn’t afford to pass out now. Then, she backed up to the very end of the platform, sprinted full speed ahead, and jumped.

For a moment she was in pure free-fall with her arms pinned tightly to her side, with slight adjustments of her body she was able to avoid two boulder shaped platforms right below her. Then, she slowly started opening her arms, where a synthetic flap now linked her arms to her body, creating aerodynamic lift, allowing her to glide. It took her a couple seconds to realize she’d stopped working on Cogs during the dive, she amended the situation immediately.

She needed the points.

The wind was drying the sweat that had accumulated on her skin and Leigh was finally feeling a little of the physical exhaustion she’d felt since the beginning of the SIM melt away. With the flight path displayed prominently in her overlay, she avoided a dozen or so additional platforms and even used a few to launch herself further into the air; she needed to stay airborne as long as possible. She’d climbed further than she calculated she had to; she needed the safety margin. Any extra second she could guarantee herself was invaluable; she could absolutely not miss her landing.

[00:19.01]

Leigh was on the final stretch when a grassy platform appeared as if out of thin air. Trying to avoid it Leigh veered sharply to the right, but in doing so she was thrown completely off course. Re-calculating as quickly as she could, she diverted all of her attention to the task, even ignoring the Advanced Computer Systems Cog she was working on. She had less than twenty seconds to make it to Point B, one or two extra A2 questions weren’t going to fix her problem. That was something only the record bonus could do.

Leigh made as much of her way back to the planned flight path as she possibly could, but she was still two platforms away when she was forced to land. If she went any further she’d end up below Point B again, and the ascent was always harder than the descent.

Not taking another second, Leigh rolled to her feet immediately upon touchdown. Dashing across the platform she tried to keep her momentum going as she leaped off onto the next platform, three meters below. Now, there was only one platform between her and Point B, but the platforms were misaligned and and Leigh had to wait three valuable seconds, the longest and most excruciating seconds of her life, before she was able to once more take a running leap onto the next platform. Then, she couldn’t wait. There was a two second time frame in which she could jump down the last 12 meters and make it to Point B.

She didn’t think. She jumped.

There was no time for thought.

There wasn’t much time to put into her landing either.

A loud crack on impact told Leigh it might not have been the best move.

She’d gotten hurt before and she knew the pain was there, but she refused to let herself feel it. She only had 15m left to reach her destination.

She had five seconds to do it in.

Sweat poured down her body. The cooling breeze of the descent long forgotten.

Four.

She felt a wash of dizziness when the sharp pain in her leg refused to let itself be pushed aside.

Three.

Leigh gritted her teeth, and surged forwards.